Archive for February, 2008

Recently Yahoo published a patent application that explains how the company analyzes web pages for related keyword phrases. Yahoo identifies several likely phrases from the content of the web pages and matches those phrases with a content dictionary. The patent application suggests that it is beneficial to use these related keywords close together on a web page so that search engines can find the relation between them more easily.

Currently, search results can include looking at different algorithms or ranking criteria that include the number of times the queried term appears on a web page, how close the terms are together on the page and the location on the page of the terms. The problem with this method is that it doesn’t factor in the context of the search terms in relation to other words on the page.

Yahoo’s patent application attempts to find out the context of the terms as a concept or phrase as it is associated with other related phrases on the page. This helps determine the most appropriate pages to return in a search query.

One of the ways Yahoo is trying to do this is by establishing meaningful phrases or concepts. A page’s text and tags let a search engine know what those pages are about. Yahoo sends the text and tags to a program that uses an aboutness extractor to break down the text, match it with keyword phrases in a concept dictionary and see if they are listed as concepts. A context dictionary keeps information that identifies related concepts, which are one or more keywords associated with a given concept. This understanding of concepts can help search engines better understand what a searcher is looking for.

The patent application covers quite a bit more on how Yahoo plans to discover better results in searches. If you are interested in learning more you can see the patent here.

It is not entirely uncommon for websites to duplicate some of the text and/or images from your site and use them without even crediting the source. These sites may be getting traffic from the content that your website would have otherwise received. Some search engines penalize the rankings of pages with duplicate content, possibly harming your search ranking because of someone else’s actions. It is not always possible to determine if this is happening, but getting a duplicate content checker is useful for identifying sites which have copied your material. A different type of content checker can determine if you have accidentally put duplicate or very similar text on different pages of your own site.

You can utilize such services as Copyscape.com or ArticleChecker.com to locate content which has been duplicated to other websites. Copyscape can be used for free, but a Premium account is necessary to go beyond the first ten checker results (of potential duplicate pages) or search for copies of pasted text that isn’t on your website. Article Checker, which can be used for free, utilizes Yahoo and Google to detect how many instances of each phrase (in pasted text or from a URL) can be found on other web pages. Sometimes photos or other graphics will be copied along with the text; otherwise, it is difficult to find unauthorized duplicate images.

Also make sure you haven’t duplicated the same content on to multiple pages of your own website, as this will also be penalized. For example, this could happen if you re-designed the site and left some of the old pages in place (or created a large number of pages on rather similar subjects). Various websites offer services or software to help find such problems. With regard to SEO (Search Engine Optimization), it is generally more important not to have duplicate content on different pages of your own website than to stop others from putting it on their sites.

After successfully locating unauthorized copied text with a duplicate content checker, consider contacting the website administrator or owner to request that it be removed. It is more practical to avoid getting angry, rude, or threatening; such people sometimes remove the content in response to a polite e-mail (because they know further action might be taken if they don’t), but may feel that they are “giving in” to remove it in response to a harsh, insulting message. Keep in mind that a user or employee might have posted the content, so an administrator may not be aware that it was duplicated if you don’t let them know.

After creating an XML sitemap for your web site, you can submit it to major search engines so that they will index the pages sooner and update the search listings for them more frequently. However, the procedure for submitting sitemaps varies significantly from one search engine to the next. Here are some details on how to submit your sitemap to four of the major search engines…

To submit your new sitemap to Microsoft’s Live Search, which provides results for both Live.com and MSN.com, first go to webmaster.live.com. Then click on the “Sign in to use the tools” button, and sign in (after registering, if necessary) with your Windows Live ID. A form titled “Add a website” will appear, where you can enter the addresses of your sitemap and homepage.

Submitting a sitemap to Yahoo is somewhat different. The easiest way to get to the correct page (which has already changed its URL at least once) is to go to Yahoo.com, then search for “submit sitemap”. Click the first result (”Yahoo! Site Explorer”) and scroll down to “Submit Site Feed.” The list below it shows that sitemaps are one type of “feed” which can be submitted using that form. You will have to log in, or register for a Yahoo account if you haven’t already.

Sitemaps can also be submitted to Google, if you register for an account there and log into Google Webmaster Tools. After logging in and reaching the “dashboard”, click the “sitemaps” tab on the menu at the left-hand side of the screen. Then click one of the two “Add Sitemap” links and select the appropriate map type from the next menu. The webmaster tools area can be accessed at google.com/webmasters/tools/.

You can submit your sitemap to Ask.com as well. According to their FAQ for webmasters, a “ping URL” may be used for this purpose. This URL is “http://submissions.ask.com/ping?sitemap=”, with the URL of your XML sitemap added to the end of it. An alternative option they suggest is to put the “auto-discovery directive” for sitemaps in your web site’s robots.txt file.

Other search engines, such as GigaBlast and ScrubTheWeb, don’t appear to offer any method to specifically submit a sitemap. However, you can still submit your web site’s home page to them. Still others (like Altavista and Lycos) get their results from other major search engines, so it isn’t necessary to submit anything to them separately.

If you have a large site with lots of different pages and target links then you should have a sitemap for it. A site map is similar to a table of contents in that it allows people to see an abbreviated version of what’s available on your website.

To create your site map the first step you’ll want to take is laying out all the pages and necessary target links in a word-processing program or on a sheet of paper. During this step you may want to visit some of the websites you are familiar with or like the layout of. Look at their sitemaps for ideas on how to organize your own.

Next, you’ll have to open a text-editing program like Notepad. Using this program open the webpage where your sitemap will be located or create a new page for the sitemap. Copy and paste, or manually enter, the sitemap you created previously into the place you want it on the webpage. Insert the links to each referenced page or target link. Save the page and preview it in a browser, checking to make sure all the links work. Once you’ve verified they all do, upload the page to your website and recheck the links.

Some web design programs like Macromedia Dreamweaver have built-in commands for creating a sitemap. You can check the help section for instructions. If it still seems too difficult to create a sitemap on your own you can purchase products such as Site Map Pro to help create the sitemap you need.

Competitive research is an important part of any search engine optimization plan. Luckily, there are several tools that can help improve your results.

The first step in any competitive research plan should be keyword research. Otherwise you might as well be throwing your money away. Keywords can bring high search volume and cost a lot of money if they are highly competitive. Doing your research using a tool like Keyword Discovery or Word Tracker can help you determine which words will make enough of a profit for your business to offset the costs. These tools can also help you find low search volume words that also make you a profit.

Another tool you should have is some sort of analytics program. Google offers a pretty good one for free. This will help you track how people are finding your site and how they behave once they are there. All of this information is invaluable when deciding things like where to advertise, who to link to, even if you should redesign your web pages to make them easier to navigate.

Compete.com is a third great tool. This site will show you the traffic trends for your competitor sites. You can list up to 3 sites and see the results of how they stack up against your site and each other. This information is priceless and free.

While these 3 tools are just the tip of the iceberg they are a great place to start your competitive research. With the help of each your SERPs will increase and your site will be more successful in the long run.

If you run a website, own a business, or manufacture a product, it is quite possible that it will receive negative publicity on the web at some time. This could be in the form of a news article, blog posting, review, or forum topic. Either way, it has the potential to harm your reputation and decrease revenue. If negative publicity of this type is false or does not accurately represent the business, consider using SEO (Search Engine Optimization) as part of your reputation management efforts…

The higher the page that is harming your reputation appears in search engine results (for the business or product’s name, or related keywords), the more it is a concern. One SEO reputation management technique to counteract this is to boost the search result rankings of other pages containing more favorable information. Placing links to such pages on your own web site will help accomplish this, as search engines generally give higher ranks to the results of pages with more links to them on other sites. If there aren’t any other sites with information about the product or business, consider issuing a newsworthy, positive press release about it; these will often spread to other web sites. Try submitting such press releases to a major article directory which accepts them (like GoArticles.com) as a component of the SEO reputation management campaign.

Likewise, reducing the number of links to the webpage with the negative information will also help decrease its prominence. If the page has false information and you can prove it, consider contacting any website or blog owners who have linked to it, politely providing them with reasons and/or data on why it is false. If the claims have received a great deal of attention and are causing significant damage to the business’s reputation, another option is to create an SEO optimized webpage on your own site refuting the accusations. Make sure this page is linked from a Site Map or another page on the web site, so that search engine spiders will be able to find it. If the undesirable page has been submitted to a social bookmarking service (like Reddit or Digg), it is very easy to create an account and “downvote” its link; this will help reduce the page’s listing prominence or make it disappear.

Following the above-mentioned tips should help you more effectively carry out online reputation management while utilizing SEO techniques. It is best not to use any aggressive, threatening, or unethical methods for accomplishing this; management practices of this type may be revealed and used to additionally worsen your reputation.

Unethical SEO (Search Engine Optimization) practices are entirely aimed at manipulating search engines, often to the detriment of their users. Web sites which employ such tactics are sometimes removed from search results. These unethical practices also undermine the reputation of legitimate SEO firms, and make it more difficult for searchers to find relevant information.

Some examples of unethical SEO techniques include putting lists of search keywords at the bottom of a page in very small text (sometimes the same color as the background), or using scripts that give different, unrelated content to search engine spiders than actual visitors see. Another example is creating many pages on a single website with the same content, but different titles and keywords. Although less likely to be “punished” by search engines, using deceptive description tags or linking to other web sites with false link text could also be considered unethical practices.

On the other hand, ethical SEO methods help web sites reach the top results for relevant keywords, but do not try to make them appear in results for keywords or phrases that don’t apply. For example, someone using unethical practices might try to make a pornographic web site appear in listings under “used cars.” Search engines are making it harder and harder for these methods to be successful, as they more often were in the past. Ethical SEO techniques also don’t attempt to deceive searchers into clicking on results about topics they aren’t actually looking for.

The definition of unethical SEO could also be expanded to include techniques which aren’t all that harmful to searchers, but can cause a web site to be removed or get its ranking reduced. These are more unethical if an SEO contractor uses them for someone else’s web site, rather than their own. A couple examples are submitting sites to FFA (a.k.a. “Free-For-All”) pages or selling links on web sites which have been “banned” by major engine(s). Be wary of services which claim to submit your site to hundreds of thousands (or millions) of unspecified “directories”; ask them just what it is they are really offering.

Basically, web site owners should always avoid using unethical SEO practices, and be careful to avoid paying anyone to apply these techniques to their sites. Although some are attracted by the potential gain in traffic offered by unethical SEO, it is not worth the risk of getting removed from the results by major search engines.

As with any complex subject or issue, there are some big myths about Search Engine Optimization (SEO) which should be dispelled. Read on to learn about five of these myths.

1. Some people claim that the purpose of SEO is to “manipulate” search engines. Actually, SEO helps make it possible for search engine software to identify sites as being relevant to the keyword someone is searching for. For a web site, it is sort of like putting your resume on high-quality paper and using a laser printer to make it more attractive for an employer.

2. Others state that just having high-quality content and writing “naturally” will usually produce a good keyword density, traffic, and high rankings. Realistically, the “spiders” which index pages cannot judge the quality of web sites, and there is a lot of high-quality content on the web that hardly anyone reads. Creating content which is of good quality is important, but does not eliminate a site’s need for SEO.

3. Another one of the myths within SEO is that only getting listed on the major search engines and directories is important. In reality, getting a link to your web site on a little-known site with a link directory about the same topic can bring it a substantial number of hits. It is also worth spending a bit of time to get listed on smaller specialized engines related to your site’s topic.

4. One of the more general myths is that the goal of SEO is purely to obtain higher search engine rankings. It is true that this is a big part of SEO’s purpose. However, high rankings are worthless if people don’t click on them, or quickly leave the page these results link to. SEO work must take into account the readability of pages, as well as the attractiveness of title and description tags. If this page had the keyword MYTHS in it twelve times, it would have a five-percent keyword density, but be less desirable to read.

5. Finally, yet another of the myths is that paying for links is always harmful (with regard to SEO). There are a few reasons why this is incorrect. First, Google appears not to penalize paid listings in (at least some) directories which thoroughly review sites before listing them; its “Webmaster Guidelines” page encourages webmasters to submit their sites to the Yahoo! directory. Also, if the “nofollow” attribute is used in a link, it won’t enhance or worsen these rankings.